


It Came from the Comment Section

by Blake C Stacey (BlakeStacey)



Category: Blade Runner (1982), Daria (Cartoon), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Bisexual Character, Canon-Typical Cynicism, Mentions of kink, Metafiction, Multi, Or a Cartoon Avatar of a Real Person Anyway, real person cameo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 09:18:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10761264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlakeStacey/pseuds/Blake%20C%20Stacey
Summary: Certain people with more good will and free time than good sense decide that Daria needs a makeover.





	It Came from the Comment Section

**Author's Note:**

> A while back, the AV Club ran a piece that asked, "Why did Daria have a thigh gap?" They promoted a website featuring cartoon characters redrawn "realistically" to fight the harmful effects of cartoons upon teen body image. This drew quite a bit of ire, since it looked to be exactly the sort of well-meaning, inept, useless-to-counterproductive glurge that the show itself skewered from its very first episode on. Also, let's be honest: If you're thinking that much about a cartoon character's thighs, you should just be writing fanfiction anyway. I felt bad about taking so long to make progress on [Daria Makes a Deal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8165015), so (perhaps unadvisedly) I dug up the comments I left at the AV Club.
> 
> I'm going to regret this, aren't I?

JANE: What the Hell happened to you?

DARIA: Mr. O'Neill. He found these people who redraw cartoon characters for what they consider "realism." I think I preferred it when the Fashion Club chased me down with cream rinses and Scrunchies.

JANE: _[begins throwing clothes into a suitcase]_ I'm getting out of here before they try to de-angular my head!

...la la LA la la...

 

_[ANTHONY DEMARTINO runs down the street, screaming, his hands covering his face]_

DEMARTINO: You **BASTARDS!** You deranged **GANG** of **THUGS!** What is your major mal **FUNCTION?!**

_[The TANK, a van held together by tape and hot glue, rolls to a gurgling stop beside him. DARIA pokes her head out of the window.]_

DARIA: Mr. DeMartino? Is something the matter?

DEMARTINO: Miss **MOR** gendorffer! Save your **SELF** before it is too **LATE!**

_[blood is dripping between his fingers]_

DARIA: Do you need, um, an ambulance?

DEMARTINO: Get out of **TOWN,** Miss **MOR** gendorffer! Escape the **RAV** ages of these... these...

_[his hands fall from his face, revealing the gouged-out socket where his bulging eye used to be]_

DEMARTINO: They tried to cor **RECT** me... but I escaped halfway **THROUGH**...

_[with each emphasized syllable, a little blood spurts from the hole]_

_[TRENT leans over from the driver's seat]_

TRENT: Come with us, Mr. D. We've got a whole van full of people who wear the same outfit every day....

DEMARTINO: Bless you, Mr. **LANE!**

_[DEMARTINO stumbles into the van and is received by gentle, welcoming hands]_

TRENT: All right. Where to?

DARIA: Some part of the Internet where the art is in service to something better than misguided ideals.

JANE: Oh! So, slash fic?

DARIA: _[turns bright red]_

...la la LA la la...

 

_[Some days later, DARIA is walking cautiously through a crowded street in FUTURISTIC LOS ANGELES, a part of the Internet's collective unconscious inhabited by people who buy glowing umbrella sticks and other such BLADE RUNNER merchandise from ThinkGeek. The residents of FUTURE L.A. are so enamored by corporate Geek Culture(TM) products that they tend to forget the original stories were, well, dystopias. DARIA would plainly rather be somewhere else, but it is easy to disappear in this city, and someone here has what they need.]_

_[DARIA stops at a food vendor. Seated to her left is YOUNG HARRISON FORD.]_

YOUNG HARRISON FORD: No, four! Two, two. Four! With noodles.

_[He proceeds to drown his fish and noodles in tequila. DARIA decides against asking him for directions. Then, the man sitting to her right speaks up.]_

MAN: Hey, glasses twins!

_[It's true: his glasses are comically---dare we say, cartoonishly---large and round, like DARIA's. They form a barrier between him and the world, but they just might help him see things that others do not.]_

DARIA: Um, hello.

MAN: I'm Scott McCloud, author of _Understanding Comics,_ _Making Comics_ and _[pauses, begins to mumble]_ ... also _Reinventing Comics._

DARIA: I'm Daria Morgendorffer, recent high-school graduate, on the run from people who see problems in the world but can't face the depth of the real causes, so they redraw cartoons instead.

SCOTT MCCLOUD: Sounds like a rough life.

DARIA: Well, at least it gives me a chance to try out the latest in fish and noodles.

SCOTT MCCLOUD: Have you heard of the "masking effect"?

DARIA: Is that what the Phantom of the Opera does to his fandom?

SCOTT MCCLOUD: Have you noticed that in comics and in animation, backgrounds are often more realistically drawn than the characters? For animation, that can be motivated by budget concerns, but even so, it has an aesthetic effect. We identify with cartoons, because we project ourselves into them in order to give them life. The more "cartoony" they are drawn, the more the reader shares in their creation. And, in fact, there can be a whole continuum of variation within a single work. Look at Harrison Ford's sushi: See how realistically it is rendered? While the noodles that I'm about to slurp are almost as cartoonish as I am, myself, because they possess a certain "life" as an extension of my own presence.

DARIA: But if you happen to notice something about those noodles---

_[Suddenly, SCOTT sees a fish head in the bottom of his noodle bowl]_

SCOTT: _[setting the bowl down]_ The object is "othered," and drawn in a more "realistic" style. _[more brightly]_ I describe this in more detail on pages 34 through 45 of my book, _Understanding Comics_ \---

DARIA: I'll check it out the next time we're in a town with a public library.

SCOTT: Don't try to find it in Babylon. Their library doesn't have comic books.

DARIA: Hey, do you know where I can find a place called EYE WORLD? I'm in the market for a prosthetic, in a refugee's price range.

SCOTT: That's funny. You're the second person who's asked me about that today.

DARIA: Who was the first?

SCOTT: _[points across the street.]_ Him, over there.

DARIA: The tall guy in the badass duster from the TV Tropes Coat Factory?

_[Across the street, ROY BATY is writing in a Moleskine and talking to himself.]_

ROY: "Fiery the angels tumbled down..." No, needs to be more alliterative. "Fiery the angels flopped..."

...la la LA la la...

 

_[Elsewhere in town, a young woman in a red jacket and a middle-aged man in a cuddly paisley sweater are at a bar, drinking. The woman is underage, but the bartender clearly doesn't care.]_

JANE: ... And it's not like we were perfect or anything. I mean, only one queer character---well, only one **out** queer character? I guess we were of our time, but we should have been **ahead** of our time, dammit. And I guess we could have developed Tom more in Season 4. Like, sacrifice a B-story about Quinn, or hey, he could have shown up at that marketing conference where Daria met that Danish balloonist....

JOHN WATSON: I wish we'd never gotten into that mess with the Chinese acrobat circus. I mean, it started off fine---pretty much your bog-standard "adventure with Sherlock and John." But then, every person from China was part of a Triad, and, just, I dunno....

JANE: Hey, you've heard my sob story. What brings you to Future L.A.?

JOHN: My best friend and my wife and me were hired to hunt down replicants.

JANE: Sounds like a risky way to pay the pizza man.

JOHN: Danger is my middle name. One of my middle names. John Hamish Danger Watson. _[looks at his glass]_ What do they put **in** this stuff?

JANE: Liquid honesty, my friend, liquid honesty.

JOHN: _[chuckles, then looks up, as a thought strikes]_ "The only **out** queer character"?

JANE: _[slumps, pushes her boot against the bar to spin her barstool]_ There was this girl at the art colony, OK? She hit on me, and, and...

JOHN: If you were really a Kinsey zero, you would have shrugged it off and not felt all uncertain about it?

JANE: Is this the voice of experience talking here? Because I always figured experience would talk with an English accent.

JOHN: It's... OK, as Facebook would say, it's complicated.

JANE: It's complicated, but is it.... **love**?

JOHN: Well, it can't be **love**. If it were **love** , I have it on good authority that my latent tentacle genes would have activated.

DARIA: You drove through DeviantArt on your way here, didn't you?

JANE: Eeep!

_[DARIA is carrying a takeout bag labeled EYE WORLD.]_

DARIA: I guess it's fine as long as you remember that a good tentacle is always a consentacle.

JOHN: You must be Daria. _[holds out his hand]_ John Watson.

DARIA: _[transfers the EYE WORLD bag to her left hand so that she can shake John's with her right]_ My pleasure. _[to Jane]_ Should we go and bring Mr. DeMartino his new T. J. Eckleburg?

JANE: _[gulps the last of her current drink]_ Want to join us for a round first?

_[DARIA smiles a little Mona Lisa smile, meant for Jane alone. She looks the only way she needs to look: perfect in Jane Lane's eyes.]_

DARIA: _[hoisting herself up onto a barstool]_ So, John Watson. What sort of qualifications does one need to get into the trade of hunting replicants?

...la la LA la la...


End file.
